“She was just upset because she got involved in the crash that we had,” Allgaier said. “She said she’s been through this and that she felt like I needed to settle down at that point.”

While Patrick’s run-in with Allgaier was a relatively minor incident and is not likely to escalate into a full-fledged feud, Patrick may continue to have problems with rookie drivers.

This year’s Sprint Cup field is loaded with young drivers, from top prospects Austin Dillon and Kyle Larson to hopefuls like Allgaier, Cole Whitt, Parker Kligerman, Ryan Truex, Alex Bowman and Michael Annett.

With the exception of Dillon and Larson, who are driving for competitive teams, the rest of the talented rookies are racing for small, underfunded teams that don’t have the equipment to run up front every week.

That means they are going to be toiling at the back of the field, trying to get all they can in cars that are a bit off the pace.

Just like Patrick did as a rookie last season.

And unless she shows dramatic improvement in her second full Cup season, Patrick likely will be racing around rookie drivers all season. And most of them aren’t likely to show her the same respect they will show more accomplished veterans.

Rookies make mistakes and often get caught up in other people’s accidents just by virtue of running near the rear of the field.

That’s what happened to Patrick at Phoenix. After climbing as high as 16th early in the race, she had fallen to 24th when her accident with Allgaier occurred on a restart.

Patrick was furious with Allgaier, telling her team on her in-car radio: “The damn 51 was driving like a complete jackass. I’m not at all surprised we wrecked.”

“That’s two weeks in a row we’ve had good cars and nothing to show for it,” she said after the race at Phoenix. “I’m starting to think if we didn’t have bad luck, we’d have no luck at all.”

Unless she can move through the field and race closer to the front, Patrick will continue to have her hands full with rookies struggling to be competitive and make a name for themselves. She can change her luck by showing improvement and staying away from them.